For my fellow French Friday with Dorie cooks (or at least those of you who have never spatchcocked a chicken before) I found this you tube video to be very helpful for this week’s recipe. He cuts his chicken in half in the end while Dorie leaves it in one piece, but otherwise the steps are the same.
What did we do before the internet?
In winter, when all those tasty summer veggies are unavailable, broccoli shows up on my plate at least once a week, and 9 times out of 10 it is prepared as follows:
This is by no means a blow-you-away recipe, heck it’s barely a recipe, but it is a simple and tasty everday side, and one that I turn to again and again.
So I was curious to try out one of the previously completed French Fridays with Dorie recipes, Garliky Crumb Coated Broccoli, which received rave reviews from my fellow FFwDers. Dorie’s recipe calls for garlic and bread crumbs to be toasted in a pan before throwing in blanched broccoli and fresh herbs. It didn’t take any more time or effort than my usual recipe and, in addition to being delicious, I felt that Dorie’s preparation classed it up a bit. And while it had a bit too much fat in it to make frequent appearances, it is a great way to dress up broccoli for company or a special occasion.
sniff sniff… I’m sick and not at all amused 😦
Tomorrow is the start of a three-day weekend here because Monday is German Unity Day (meant to celebrate the fact that we live in Germany and not East or West Germany) and what better way to celebrate German unity than by driving to Switzerland for a little hiking. No? Well, it may not be very patriotic but that is the current plan and I really hope that I wake up tomorrow miraculously cured. In the meantime you will hopefully forgive me if I am a little less coherent than usual.
This week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe was Deconstructed BLT & Eggs, which is basically a salad made with all the classic BLT ingredients. And eggs. Now, I LOVE a good BLT, especially a BLTA with a little avocado thrown into the mix. Yummy! Never had a BLTE with an egg, but I guess that’s what makes it a bit French since the europeans seem far more inclined to see eggs as a typical sandwich ingredient than americans. Well, except for egg salad, but let’s move on. Because really if you think about it, making a salad out of all those ingredients is hardly a stretch.
To start with I fried up some bacon and toasted croutons. And may I just take a moment here to say that Dorie’s croutons toasted in bacon grease were freakin amazing and I will probably never make them again! At one point I had to physically hide them from myself so that I would not eat them all before the rest of the salad was ready. Way too dangerous! But once again, moving on.
The rest of the salad came together fairly quickly and made a very substantial lunch in and of itself. As with my preferred sandwich toppings, I think a little avocado would have fit in here nicely. And yet…
There is no denying that this salad was very tasty, but I think I prefer my BLTs to be constructed. And since I doubt that the salad version saved me any calories, I will likely eat my BLTs in sandwich form in the future.
I seem to be on a roll with the cookies.
First of all, last week I made madeleines (well, almost) for the first time in my life using Dorie’s recipe for Honey-Spiced Madeleines. Dorie describes her recipe as “not your typical madeleine” and at the time it felt a bit backwards to be making the “not typical” madeleines before I had ever attempted to make the typical ones. In essence I had no benchmark to compare them against, how the heck was I even supposed to know that I had done them correctly? It just didn’t feel right.
So this week I pulled out Dorie’s Baking: From My Home to Yours book and made her Classic Madeleine recipe. Actually, since I do not own a madeleine pan what I made was classic madeleine flavored tea cakes. But setting semantics aside for a moment, these were delicious! I may not have been entirely convinced by the honey-spiced madeleine recipe, but I will definitely make the classic recipe again.
And then, because apparently one can never have enough cookies, I decided to make Dorie’s Salted Butter Break-ups. Actually, I have had my eye on this previously completed French Fridays with Dorie recipe for a while, but baking for a household of two is a bit tricky. I have nothing against dessert (as is probably already abundantly clear by this point in the post) but I do not like to have mounds of leftover sweets and baked goods lying around, tempting me every time I enter the kitchen. Thus I always find myself trying to halve or even quarter the dessert recipes and then somehow get the leftovers out the door once I have had my portion. So when we were invited to bring something sweet to a friend’s house for a small get together, I thought it would be the perfect opportunity to get this one checked off the list.
This is unlike any cookie I have ever made before. The flavor and texture is somewhere between a sugar cookie and a Scottish shortbread, but with a perceptible hint of saltiness. And instead of being served up in cute little cookie form, the dough is cooked into one big sheet which is then broken up into pieces.
All in all I liked this one. It had way more taste than the meagre list of ingredients would suggest and it was much less time-consuming than baking batch after batch of drop cookies. However, the cookie did not hold up well and had acquired a slight stale taste after only one day. This fact alone will likely keep me from turning to this recipe very often.
One day I would love to have a spacious kitchen with enough counter and storage space for all the gadgets I covet. I am one of those who could spend hours in Williams Sonoma or Sur la Table. But until then, this is my little kitchen…
What you see is what you get. It is not large but I am not complaining, I know that some of my fellow urban dwellers make do with even tighter cooking quarters, I am simply pointing out why there is no room for superfluous kitchen accoutrements in my life. Â Every appliance and gadget which takes up precious real estate in this kitchen must pull its weight or face swift eviction.
All of which is my rather long-winded explanation for why I made “madeleine inspired” cakes as opposed to the honey-spiced madeleines which were this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe. Madeleines, in case you are unfamiliar with them, are french tea cakes which have a unique sea shell shape to them. This distinct shape come from a special madeleine mold (do you see where I am going with this?), and since I do not have room in my kitchen for a cake pan with such a limited purpose in life, I instead baked my cakes in muffin tins.
Americans would probably categorize these as cookies because of their size, but they are actually made with cake batter which gives them a light fluffy texture and makes them perfect for dipping in tea or coffee.
Sadly I have to say that these little cakes, while certainly tasty, were not among our favorite Dorie recipes. They were easy enough to make and we certainly enjoyed them with our tea. I guess they just didn’t excite me enough to make me want to bake them again. Another point against them is that they do not keep very well, and there are only limited occasions where I would be willing to make a dessert which must be eaten the same day it is prepared.
C’est la vie. I am happy that I gave this one a try and I am already looking forward to the next recipe.
I admit that picky eaters confuse me. When the list of foods that you will not eat is longer than the list of foods that you will eat… what fun is that? But picky or not, we all have foods which we dislike, and cooked carrots were on my dislike list for most of my life. In fact, it was only very recently that I discovered that cooked carrots can actually taste… well… good!
When I was a child I had a long list of foods which I considered inedible, including many classics such as brussel sprouts, eggplant, and especially cooked carrots. Today I happily eat all of these foods. For a long time I simply believed that our tastes change as we age, and while I still believe this to be true, I also wonder if there is perhaps another reason lurking in the corner, one which we may be hesitant to admit, for fear of insulting the woman who raised us.
The more I learn to cook for myself, the more I wonder if it is my tastes which have changed, or if I have just learned to make these foods in a way which is more pleasing to me. For example, and with no disrespect to my mother intended, my mother’s recipe for most vegetables was as follows: cut, steam, serve. This is not to say that she was a bad cook, because she most definitely was not, but that she tended to view vegetables as a source of nutrition and not a source pleasure. So back to my original point, if I was served a plate of plain steamed carrots today, I would probably conclude that I still do not like carrots. But, in Dorie’s hands, with a little added flavor, though hardly much more effort, I have come to appreciate this nutritious vegetable.
Actually, truth be told, the first time I had really good carrots was last year when I took a cooking class. The class was taught by a delightful French woman who taught us how to make ”carmelized carrots” using a recipe quite similar to Dorie’s, but with such a heavy handed dollop of butter that I rather discounted it. I mean, if you add enough butter to anything it is going to taste good right? Even snails!
But then along came Dorie’s recipe for Spiced Butter-Glazed Carrots (published here in Bon Appetit magazine) and completed last year by the French Fridays with Dorie cooks. As the title suggests, there is still some butter in there, but a mere 2 tablespoons for 6 servings is hardly overindulgence. The recipe calls for an onion and some spices to be sauteed with the carrots in a little broth (I used vegetable stock) until soft and flavorful. The result is a side dish tasty enough to be served for company, but also simple enough to make when it is just the two of us. And in our house, that’s a recipe which we would call ”a keeper”.
This week, while the rest of the French Fridays with Dorie crew was making Cinnamon Crunch Chicken, I was busy catching up with old recipes. It’s not that I didn’t want to make this week’s recipe, I did, but it turns out that speculoos cookies (the “cinnamon crunch” part of the recipe) are considered Christmas cookies here in Germany and will thus not be available for a couple more months. And since Dorie specifies that ”this recipe is best with store-bought” as opposed to homemade cookies, I decided to put this one on hold.
So, what to make instead? As so often occurs my menu was dictated by my refrigerator, or in this case by my freezer; for there, hiding behind the ice cream, was a half  portion of Dorie’s Sweet Tart Dough leftover from last month’s batch of cupcakes de chevre. With the dough already made and all the other ingredients easily found in my cupboards, Dorie’s Orange-Almond Tart seemed as good as made.
With only half a ball of tart dough I decided to use an 8 inch tart pan and cut the rest of the ingredients down accordingly. Well, that was the plan anyway, but the week got busy and by the time I got around to actually making the tart I had completely forgotten to cut down my recipe, and instead ended up pouring a full batch of almond filling into my 8 inch tart pan. It wasn’t until I pulled the tart out of the oven, and compared my tart to the lovely picture in Dorie’s book that I remembered why that might not have been a good idea. As you can see in the below pictures, whereas Dorie’s tart is perfect on top, mine got quite brown and a little dry before the filling was completely done in the center. Oops!
I set the tart to cool and went on about my day. For whatever reason I was not overly excited about this one to begin with, and then after messing up the proportions, I really wasn’t very hopeful. However, my husband (the notorious sweet tooth) is always excited by the prospect of dessert and hadn’t been home more than two minutes before I found him in the kitchen cutting himself a slice. Not five minutes after that he was going back for seconds! Hmm, maybe I’d better give this tart a try after all.
And oh my goodness, best FFwD dessert yet! This tart is amazing and I am so glad that I went back to make it. For those of you who would like to give it a try (and you should!) the recipe can be found here on Dorie’s blog. Her blog version is made with poached pears, but it is quite easy to substitute orange segments or, as she explains in her book, any array of fruits. I can’t wait to make it again!
I first heard about Tuesdays with Dorie several years ago. This is a group of bloggers who are baking their way through Dorie Greenspan’s beautiful book, Baking: From my Home to Yours. I actually own the book, having received it as a Christmas present many years ago, and at the time I even considered joining this merry group of online bakers. But two things held me back: first, just thinking about having all those baked goods in my house week after week made my pants feel tight, and second, while I have enjoyed many of the recipes from Dorie’s Baking book, I just could not see myself wanting to try every single one. It is after all, a rather hefty tome.
When Dorie’s latest book Around my French Table came out and Tuesdays with Dorie turned into French Fridays with Dorie, the first of my hesitations was no longer valid because Around my French Table offers recipes for every meal, from light luncheon salads to hearty winter mains, and of course, more tasty desserts. But I still wasn’t sure I wanted to cook every recipe in the book. The book is filled with mouth watering recipes, but at the same time, and with no disrespect intended to Dorie, there are simply a few which I would not have picked to cook on my own. What I didn’t understand was… this is in fact the single best reason to embark on the mission of cooking your way through an entire cook book!
What I have discovered is that being forced to step outside my comfort zone and make a recipe which, for whatever reason, I would not normally try is a very rewarding experience. I’m not going to lie and say that I have loved every recipe, a few so far have fallen into the not-bad-but-we-don’t-need-to-make-it-again category. A few have simply 
been more trouble than they were worth. But quite a number have pleasantly surprised me. In fact, some of my favorite recipes so far have been ones which I never would have picked on my own.
With this in mind, I am looking forward to sticking it out and finishing the book. Bring on the next recipe!
I grew up in rural Vermont with parents who had very strong views on food. Actually, they had pretty strong views on most topics, but since we’re talking cooking today we’ll stick with food. In general we followed a very strict diet which slowly loosen up over the years. When I was in elementary school there was no meat or fish of any kind, limited dairy products, and no sugar. In my high school years chicken and fish started showing up on the dinner table, along with most dairy products, but sugar and red meat were still considered evil. On my first day of college I gleefully abandoned all restrictions and subsisted for the next four years on a diet which would probably make most parents cringe. But I am happy to say that post college I slowly reverted back to a more nutritious lifestyle, though still one without any restrictions. At this point even my parents have further loosened up and today will eat most everything in moderation.
By the way, I should mention that this entire time I also had another set of parents in Chicago who had a more mainstream diet and who I visited a few times each year to get my fill of chocolate chip cookies and other forbidden delights. My step mother claims to this day that the reason we have such a good relationship is because she introduced me to chocolate, and I’m not going to deny that it may have played a role:-) But since I only spent a small percentage of my time in Chicago, there were many foods which I simply did not encounter until I was older, and a few which I have still yet to try.
Why do I bring this up? Well, there seem to be a few recipes which most of the French Fridays with Dorie crew instantly associate with a loved (or sometimes hated) childhood dish. In particular, Dorie’s recipe for Hachis Parmentier (a previously completed FFwD recipe which can be found here on NPR) was branded a “french version of Shepherd’s Pie” by many of my fellow home cooks, some of whom had fond and some not so fond memories of their mothers’ version. Having never encountered Shepherd’s Pie myself, I went into Dorie’s recipe with no preconceived notions or expectations, except that it seemed to be a pretty heavy casserole of some sort and looked like an awful lot of work to get on the table.
Hachis Parmentier is indeed a bit of work, that is unless you happen to have leftover boiled meat hanging around, which according to Dorie is how the recipe is traditionally made. If you don’t have any handy leftovers, this is in fact two separate recipes, first a beef stew and then mashed potatoes, layered together in a casserole dish and then thrown in the oven for half an hour.
As per Dorie’s suggestion I spread the work out over two days, boiling the beef and bouillon on the first day (effectively making my own leftovers) and then making a stew and mashed potatoes on day two. Even so, this recipe seemed quite arduous and as I was putting the assembled casserole in the oven I may have muttered something to the effect of, ”this better be freaking fantastic or I am never making it again!”
Well, it was fantastic and we will definitely be making it again. I know that it may not look like much in the photos (not one of Dorie’s more photogenic recipes) but it is delicious and definitely worth the effort. My husband, who was also a little dubious at first, really enjoyed it as well. Two thumbs way up for french Shepherd’s Pie!
I am not normally a squeamish person, but I do have my moments and this week’s French Fridays with Dorie recipe presented me with a challenge. Mind you this was in no way Dorie’s fault, but rather a learning experience of my own making.
Let me start at the beginning. This week’s recipe is Creamy Cheesy Garlicky Rice with Spinach (talk about a mouth-full) and after some internal indecision over how to serve this, I decided to call it french risotto and serve it as a main dish instead of a side. And to spruce it up a bit, top it with some sauteed shrimp.
So off I set to Frankfurt’s large indoor market, and straight to my favorite fish stall, were the fish is always incredibly fresh and the fish mongers are so nice and helpful. Upon hearing that I wanted shrimp, the fish guy excitedly told me that they currently had some very fresh ones in stock and proceeded to start piling them on the scale for me. It was at this point, specifically when one of the shrimp jumped out of the scale in an escape attempt, that I realized exactly how fresh these shrimp were… they were still alive and quite literally kicking! The fish guy laughed, reminded me to keep a cover on the pan when I cooked them, and handed me over a bag of the freshest shrimp I have ever purchased. Eeek!
Now any of you who live on the coast or have even ever cooked lobster are probably rolling your eyes at me, and frankly I don’t blame you. Really, why is this any different from any of the times I’ve ever cooked mussels? And since I think there is a lobster recipe lurking somewhere in Dorie’s book, maybe this is good practice. Well anyway, this was the reasoning I was using on myself all the way home.
Once home I called my husband at work for moral support… and as I listened to his laughter coming through the phone lines I realized that I had probably called the wrong person. The germans are definitely not as squeamish as americans about such stuff. All you have to do is walk into any real butcher shop anywhere in the country if you want to test that theory. So I was on my own.
In the end I reasoned that it was probably less cruel to just get it over with quickly instead of letting them slowly suffocate, so into the pot they went and down came the lid. The fish guy wasn’t kidding at all, the pot sounded like it was being used to pop popcorn for the first few seconds and it was at this point that I realized the big difference between cooking live shrimp versus mussels, mussels don’t fight back. Yes, call me a wimp, roll your eyes, but I actually felt bad.
Now back to Dorie’s rice. Her recipe calls for aborio rice to be cooked like traditional rice instead of risotto (meaning no stirring) and then mixed with cheese & spinach. Since I’ve never cooked arborio rice this way and had no idea how long it would take, I may have overcooked it a bit, but after all the cheese and other add-ins were thrown into the pot, it tasted creamy and delicious anyway.
And how were the shrimp you might ask? They were the best shrimp I have ever eaten!
one expat's life 